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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

"Slaves of New York" @ 30

To read Tama Janowitz's acclaimed short story collection Slaves of New York is to gaze upon a world both familiar and distant.

Published thirty years ago this summer, the book was prescient about
the exigencies of life in NYC: the spiraling rents, the ruthless
ambition, the preening narcissism of the successful, the desperation of
those who aren't -- and the way that people and their relationships are
warped by this existential maelstrom. The book is set mainly in the
world of artists, where creativity clashes with reality, where love
clashes with money. According to the book, a "slave" is someone in NYC
who lives with someone they don't really like (or even loathe) but are
forced to by economic circumstances; the "slaves" are the focus of
Janowitz's funny and moving book.

Today, when so New Yorkers can barely afford to live
here, there are probably more "slaves" here than ever before. Ms. Janowitz was on
to something way back when.

And yet ... Slaves of New York is about a time and place gone
by. In 1986, when the book was published, the "downtown art scene" still
existed, even thrived. Sure, crime was a lot higher, the city was in
rough shape, and people were fleeing. But the NYC art world seemed more
like a community, a world unto itself that defied the city's decay, a
defiant flower blooming in the tundra. Today, the downtown art scenedoesn't
really exist in NYC anymore. Sure, there are still big fancy galleries
downtown but most of the struggling and innovative artists have been
banished to the outer boroughs or out of the city altogether. The
creativity, for the most part, has gone elsewhere. Go to downtown today
and it's mostly fancy clothing stores and restaurants and glass
buildings. The NYC art scene is much more diffuse today, less of a
community and more of an abstract idea.

That's why, in many ways, Slaves of New York is more relevant
today than ever. It saw where the NYC art scene and NYC itself was
headed: into a world of concentrated wealth and mass economic
disparities, into a world where art wasn't valued except for how much it
could be sold for, where relationships were transactional and
fungible, where NYC is a place so many live in but few believe really belongs
to them. In many ways, this world existed then but in a somewhat more
primitive form; today, it is institutionalized, absolute.

I wrote about Slaves of New York several years ago when I did a
blog post about the NYC art scene in the movies. In 1989, the book was
turned into a movie by the Merchant-Ivory team, better known for
adaptation of classic British novels. The movie is, in a word, funky. It
stars the always fabulous Bernadette Peters as Eleanor, an aspiring hat
designer who lives with her awful boyfriend artist Stash in his
downtown loft (she is his "slave"). The story concerns how Eleanor
liberates herself from the her "slavedom" and re-starts her life as a
single woman and an artist in her own right. (Some might call the story a feminist
statement but, if so, it's not very a preachy one.) The movie, like the book,
also concentrates on an artist named Marley Montello, a rather absurd
character who intersects with Eleanor at various points.

What I love about the book and the movie is how the story is both so
New York and so rooted in the 1980s art world yet also universal,
timeless. It's about struggle, it's about love, it's about the
complexity of all sorts of relationships, it's about wanting to become
something and facing so many immovable obstacles to achieve it, it's
about confronting your fears. And it's also a wonderful snapshot of NYC
at a time when it was no longer a place where people really could afford
to starve but where it was still possible, with very little money, to eke out an existence. Without knowing it, it was a swan song. Without knowing it, it was
about the mythic downtown NYC art world -- just before the deaths of such
icons as Andy Warhol and Basquiat, who ruled and defined it -- came to an
end.

I remember discovering Slaves of New York and Tama Janowitz
many years after the book was published and the movie came out. It was
the summer after I had graduated from college, and I was working in a
miserable job in a sterile corporate environment, dreaming of a life
that was more artistic, more fulfilling, more ... funky. The Bravo
Channel (then a great arts and independent film channel and not a
reality TV grindhouse) was showing Slaves of New York endlessly. The movie and then the book inspired me. It felt like Tama Janowitz had created this story just for me.
She seemed to get me -- get my anxiety, my fears, my hopes and dreams,
and my romanticyearningsabout the possibilities of life and NYC. No, I wasn't an artist and
didn't aspire to be one (except, maybe, a writer). But Slaves of New York,Eleanor's story, seemed to be the only thing understanding me at a time when no one else seemed to. Eleanor, c'est moi (even though I'm a dude).

Slaves of New York has a proud legacy. It's a real NYC story
and a poignantencapsulation of an era. But its the pure delight of the writing and the story's universal message that makes it great. And that's why, three decades after
it's publication, people still read and remember it. And when my kids
are old enough to read Slaves of New York, and I want them to learn more about the NYC I grew up in, it will be one of the first books I'll give them.

1 comment:

Beautiful honoring of a great book and legacy. Check out Tama's latest promo video for the 30 year anniversary of SLAVES OF NEW YORK and the release of her new memoir SCREAM. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99UU6Tb6wvQ